What is Evangelical Repentance?

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As we prepare to look at the points that he makes again, he first gives some examples of what repentance is not, and he says it's evident that everything, every expression of sorrow that a person feels is not repentance.

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It should be evident to anyone. He says even common sense tells us that every pang of sorrow for sin, every instance of reformation is not that repentance which we now have under consideration.

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So you can think of a number of reasons why you might feel sorrow over sin, whether being caught in your sin and you know consequences are coming, or you look bad in front of someone, self -preservation, self -reputation are a number of reasons why a person might feel sorry or sorrow that has nothing to do with really hating the sin itself and hating that it grieved

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God. And he mentions that he couldn't imagine that a person lives that hasn't felt something like that at some time or another, and you might be tempted to think because you have felt that that you are repentant and you're okay.

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So he says, perhaps you have cried and wept to think of your sinful life and trembled to think what would be the end of it.

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You have also prayed to God to forgive you and resolved and promised you would reform. Nay, it is possible the terrors of the

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Lord and a sense of guilt may have almost overwhelmed and distracted you, haunted you from day to day and disturbed your nightly slumbers.

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On these accounts, you conclude, perhaps, that you are true penitents, but alas, after all this, you may be but impenitent sinners.

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So if that's a possibility, what does real repentance look like? Yeah, and that's where this sermon is so helpful.

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I was thinking when you were reading that, that all through my teenage years, I was a lost kid who was a baptized lost kid, a church member lost kid, and very active because of my parents in church.

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But I remember living so selfishly that even I was bothered at times.

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But I always used that, what you just read, I used that as my one last line of defense.

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Well, I must be a Christian because after I do these things, I do feel bad about them. And really, looking back now,

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I understand, well, I felt bad about them because I have a conscience from God, and my conscience was trained by parents who believe the

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Bible. So I had this conscience that would constantly, whether I wanted it to or not, would be a mirror of my actions.

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But it wasn't until I read Charles Spurgeon's autobiography in college, and we were sharing the house at that time, that I realized

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Spurgeon felt bad for his sins years before he's a Christian. And then I thought, well, now what have

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I got? If that's not a Christian, well, what is the evidence? And of course, I had no evidence. Well, when he looks at the evidences or the distinguishing marks of what he calls an evangelical repentance, and he gives us five here.

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They're very helpful, and they're clear, and they follow. But what does he mean by, you're going to ask me?

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Yeah. What does he mean by evangelical? What does he mean by evangelical? Well, I think what he means is, the older writers use this term to distinguish between kind of a self -righteous repentance and a repentance that flows out of gratitude because of the gospel.

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So the key is evangelical. So think of it this way. You can either see God at Mount Sinai with the thunderings and the terror, and you realize, okay, if that God really exists,

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I'm in trouble because I keep breaking His law. And that's one view of God. But an evangelical view of God is the view that a person who sees

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Christ on the cross dying for my crimes, and the heart is broken and melted, and then when you hear the call, turn to me, turn from, turn toward, the heart immediately leaps up and says,

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I want to do that. So it's the kind of repentance that flows from gratitude in the life of a person who sees

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Christ as that suffering Savior. So evangelical instead of legal repentance that would see the law and hear the thundering of the law and think, woe is me, without any of the gratitude to God and desiring to have

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Him. Yeah, and we're going to talk about his fifth point where he brings in the Christocentric nature of repentance, that it's only as we're looking at Christ that repentance is really fueled.

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So yeah, grateful, not to earn my salvation, and it's not really about me, it's I want to live for the